Youth Blogging

[karen levy]

I hope to continue blogging on this site. I have introduced Youth Voices to students but I haven't been as successful as I hoped. I think that young people are so busy with their Myspace pages and other online social networks that they probably don't have time to use another one unless it is made a requirement. Some teachers/ librarians have suggested getting a Myspace page and that might be an interesting experiment.

[Paul Allison]

As soon as this Institute ends, Susan Ettenheim and I will be working with a Drupal developer to re-invigorate http://youthvoices.net ... as well as move it from elgg to Drupal software. The point is that I hope we will have a site that is exciting, where students will explore their own inquiries, write about books they are reading and recommend them to each other, and build toward a some form of community action around an important issues -- such as we can see at http://youthnoise.org. Hang in there! We'll depend on you and Julia to hook us up at CCCHS.

[Felicia]

But why ask kids to do more of what they are already doing? How would the Myspace page you would require be different from their own Myspace? Should we co opt student's "pleasures" and turn them into academic assignments? What is made possible in a Ning that isn't possible on Myspace? Should we teach students responsible blogging/communicating and more formal writing in a different space from their "play" space?